NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Fishermen win a small victory

October 8, 2015 — Fishermen in the Northeast fisheries can celebrate a small victory in what President Obama didn’t do on Monday.

The president addressed, by video, attendees of the Our Ocean 2015 conference in Valparaiso, Chile, and announced two new marine sanctuaries, neither one of them off the coast of new England.

Commercial fishing advocates had been fighting to counter the message of environmental groups that were running a full-scale campaign to put Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts on the list, along with the two announced by the president in Maryland and Lake Michigan.

New England fishermen looked at the 6,000 square miles under consideration off the coast and saw the next strategic step toward pushing them off the ocean.

The valuable cold-water kelp forests of Cashes Ledge and the coral fields in the five canyons and four seamounts are worthy of protection, but they are already off limits to fishermen.

Fishing advocates’ concern of “policy creep” can’t be dismissed as paranoia. The steady negative impact of regulation on the fishing industry is well-documented in reports on the health of the industry, and the use of various regulatory tools has left the industry reeling, wondering where the next threat will come from.